AS East Lancashire faces the prospect of its first lap-dancing club, it is worth asking whether such a place fits in the many efforts to improve the region's image.

Some £11million has been ploughed into the regeneration of Blackburn town-centre where this club will be . The aim is to make the centre more attractive to visit, shop, work and live in.

And a key part of the strategy is taking it up-market -- to increase spending power and boost its economy. The massive revamp of Church Street -- where it is hoped that the reconstructed Pavilions buildings will be the anchor site for smart retail and leisure outlets -- is aimed at triggering the transformation. Can such a place as a lap-dancing club contribute anything positive to that process - particularly when it is situated in an area designated by the council as the 'Cultural Quarter.'

Hardly. Blackburn town-centre's night-time image and economy is already, in the view of many, geared in the other direction -- as a place where young people go to get drunk. The addition of a sleazy attraction may only add to the negative impression that the council and others are rightly trying to dispel.

There are many other concerns about this proposal -- including the moral one of the club being located near a college campus and the prospect of young women in the town centre having to run a gauntlet of sex-aroused men.